An Investigation Of The Undergraduates’ Student Engagement Of MOOC Learning And The Influential Factors

Massive Open Online Courses(MOOCs),as the new teaching and learning form,have aroused great attention all over the world to their openness and massive spreading.With the help of information technology and “Big Data”,more and more people can easily have access to education resources with high quality.Learners’ personal learning needs are greatly being satisfied.Meanwhile,MOOCs also have brought the challenges and opportunity to school education and administration,which is obviously triggering inevitable education revolution.However,while receiving some applause and concern,MOOCs are facing up with wide incredulity,including absence of effective interaction,limited learning support,high dropout and lack of effective learning evaluation.Many previous studies in this field focus merely on learners’ online learning behaviors on the basis of quantitative “Big Data” and ignore subjects’ emotions and cognitive process.Student engagement theory can connect learners’ online learning behaviors,emotions and cognition within a three-dimension construct,including behavioral emotional and cognitive engagements,which is expected to be a predictor of learning performance and an evaluation standard of online education quality.The present study sets out to investigate the status quo of learners’ involvement and the influential factors affecting student engagement in MOOC learning from internal and external perspectives.After the final exam of MOOC of an English course,127 science major sophomores enrolled from a comprehensive university in Hubei Province were required to finish a questionnaire on student engagement with the MOOC.Then 8 participants were selected to have an interview for more and indepth information.With the combination of questionnaire,observation and semi-structured interview,qualitative and quantitative datawere collected.With analysis of the collected data,the result suggests that undergraduates’ total student engagement presents a medium level.High level of emotional engagement unfolds those students have positive emotion reactions to MOOC learning.Among the three dimensions of student engagement,behavioral engagement is in a less medium level and cognitive engagement ranks the lowest.In this study,the results don’t support the significant effects of demographic variables(gender,English proficiency and previous MOOC learning)on students’ engagement.Then,13 factors identified in qualitative analyses are found to positively or negatively influence college students’ engagement in MOOC learning,of which interest and attitudes as motivational constructs are the main factors affecting student involvement in MOOC learning.Furthermore,MOOC student engagement is greatly weakened by absence of social presence in course design and lack of effective MOOC supervision in MOOC platform operation and administration.This study has proved the possibility on application of student engagement theory to MOOC learning.From the perspective of self-determined motivation,this study certifies again that extrinsic motivation has positive impacts on MOOC student engagement.By investigation of college students’ involvement level and the influential factors affecting involvement,the research hopes to provide some help and shed light on enhancement of current MOOC learning quality.